Word Counter - Online Character/Word/Line Counter

1. Count a draft

Publisher portals disagree on dictionaries. Treat this panel as a planning instrument and reconcile against the official counter before a hard deadline. Save a screenshot of both counters when disputes are likely.

1. Paste the full manuscript or the section you are trimming.
2. Map each metric to the platform rule you must satisfy (spaces counted or not; CJK by character vs Latin by tokens).
3. Edit, then recheck reading time and the metric your editor actually enforces.

2. CJK versus Latin “words”

Following common office intuition, each Han, kana, or Hangul character counts as one word here, while Latin and digit runs count as whitespace-separated tokens. That differs from naive space-only splitting and is closer to how Word or WPS treat Chinese. Mixed documents should be read via the CJK and Latin subtotals, not the single total alone.

• Check subtotals on bilingual paragraphs.
• Do not force English whitespace rules onto Chinese copy.
• Agree the counting rule with the other party in writing for paid work.

3. Metrics people overlook

UTF-8 byte length matters for API payloads and SMS budgets. Non-empty line count matters for checklists and poetry line limits. Reading time assumes roughly 400 CJK characters per minute and 200 Latin words per minute — a planning signal, not a lab measurement. Sentences and paragraphs help when a brief says “keep it under N paragraphs” rather than a word cap.

4. Whitespace and invisible characters

Characters-with-spaces versus without can diverge a lot. Pastes from the web may carry non-breaking spaces or zero-width characters that inflate counts. Run a whitespace cleaner first when this counter and your editor disagree by more than a few units on a short sample. Prefer plain-text paste over rich HTML when submitting to forms that strip markup unpredictably.

5. Combine with replace and dedupe

While trimming to a limit, pair this counter with find/replace and line dedupe: remove filler, collapse duplicate bullets, recount. Keeping the loop in the browser avoids shipping drafts to third-party counters that retain text. For list-heavy documents, non-empty lines often track progress better than word totals.

6. Acceptance checklist

Ship only when your recorded metric matches the form field name — “words” on a Chinese portal may mean characters. When a client disputes a translation word count, export both parties’ counters on the same plain-text sample so you argue about rules, not about different invisible characters in two pastes.

1. Compare one paragraph against the target editor counter; small deltas from rule differences are normal.
2. If deltas are huge, strip HTML tags and odd whitespace, then recount.
3. Record which metric (words vs characters vs bytes) the submission form actually uses.

7. What this page does not claim

It does not implement every CMS proprietary dictionary, does not strip markdown syntax unless you paste rendered text, and does not bill for you. Use it to steer drafting; let the billing or submission system be the final authority.

8. Billing and editorial disputes

Translation and content vendors often disagree because one party counts Word’s “words” while another counts characters without spaces. Before work starts, write the metric name, tool, and language mode into the statement of work. During delivery, both sides should paste the same plain-text export into this counter and into the contractual tool, then photograph both results. If numbers diverge, hunt invisible characters and HTML residue before arguing about rates. For bilingual marketing pages, report CJK and Latin subtotals separately so neither side can claim the total was inflated by the other script. Reading time is for planning briefs and landing-page pacing — never use it as a billing unit. Pasting Markdown counts fences and syntax as characters — fine for raw drafts, misleading for visible words. Prefer rendered plain text when the brief cares about reader-facing length. Code samples inflate Latin word counts; exclude appendix listings from the billed section when contracts say so.

• Name the metric in the contract before drafting starts.
• Compare identical plain-text pastes when disputing counts.
• Report CJK and Latin subtotals on bilingual deliverables.